Chapter 1: Prologue

A Witches Dream

Raging between two unsure silhouettes laid in shambles a hearth made of bones, carcasses, wool, and hide. Midst of the inferno senselessly struggled Araneae's legs dressed in old snake skin. They fought for freedom, sputtering embers, tolling an allegro melody of melancholy tambourine bells. Bewitched by its cries, women of black-painted white emerged from the shadows, inching, mangling, and frolicking into a congregation of hysteria and masturbation. Followed from where they came were soft repositioned steps and whips of tails that jostled into a feminine whisper.

"Pay close attention, for I will only show you this story once."

A fox with seven tails said as it looked beyond the hunched profiles that stalked the earth—and their escape—to a young girl of African roots.

"A poet by the name of Avijeet Dos once said: You are like the first drops of wet rain. The first ray of the warm sun. I call myself a madman, for I have lost myself within you—somewhere." The Fox peered off down toward the flames. "I should be happy to know that your gods can't reach you here, yet there is a lingering feeling of emptiness that I cannot explain."

There was an ache in the child's heart as the Fox seemed without company despite her presence. She felt the need to comfort her, but it seemed her mind was read, and the Fox's scoff rejected the thought of it.

"In any case." The Fox said as she rose to her feet. "I will tell you the story of a creature known as the Ehko of the End. Time is of the essence, so we must be quick about it. Change into something that can keep up. Quickly now, come along and don't fall behind. There are many things I can be sure of, but your safety isn't one of them."

Safety? The girl tried to remember. Isn't it Tuesday? I'm sure the weather was perfectly moody, with fog thick enough to block the light. Was it the school that I left early? The girl staggered to her feet, unsure of her name or age.

"Don't overthink it. My gifts can be maddening. It has a way of separating and replacing memories of those I've come in contact with and those I've eaten."

Eaten! The girl wanted to scream, but it was as if her voice had been taken. What is this!? She backed away from the fire but was stopped by the icy gaze of her guide.

"I said to be quick about it, didn't I?" The Fox whipped one of the seven tails toward the child, wrapping her up in warmth that reminded her of summer. "Feel my fur, look upon my physique and use that as your guide to change."

The girl tried hard to think about the feeling, but the concept of changing didn't make sense to her. Couldn't she ride on top?—The Fox growled in protest. Kidding, she reassured the Fox. The child paused for a minute, then took a breath, closed her eyes as tight, and squeezed her sweaty palms till there was a pulse. She imagined what it would be like to run on fours, leap elegantly into a shroud of bushes, and sniff an apple pie miles away.

Her body slowly changed as her thoughts ran rampant with what she could do. When she opened her eyes, her hands were black paws with white spheres on the outside of what would've been her wrist and ankles. She was as slender as the Fox, elegant with a long snout and glistening whiskers. She had nine tails, unlike the other, but smaller and bushier, so it didn't appear as striking.

"Good. Here are the rules before we go any further. One is to never stray from my side. Two, never peer further than what I'm instructing you to. Three, do not listen to the voices, and four, always address me as Madam. Nod if you understand." The child nodded. "Good." Madam poured as her tail jostled a leap through scenes to a snowy abandoned village on the outskirts of town.

"Look there at the cabin." Madam jerked her head toward a single-family home. "Can you guess what's in there? Open your eyes and take a look inside." Madam looked begrudgingly at the child. "Well?"

A hole, she thought. A great hole dug by something not human. Madam smacked her teeth unpleasantly as she pushed the little Fox to the side. "That is where earth's pores chose to subside and things that out to crawl learned to walk. In the future, Ehko of the End will come to rest here. To release everything, it's pent up. Can you see the many abstruse sizes of leaden souls which escaped its hell? Its kin left to liquidate before they can even reach the front door. A trail of their pain stained every inch of the cabin's wooden floor. Their sense of self has no choice but to return to the bleak-filled cavity of onyx sludge that cradles Ehko."

The girl whimpered as she shied away from soot-dyed tips that prised the lip of the trench. Whatever it was hurled a third of itself upwards from the hull; it had no sense of balance and no legs to give it stability; it cloddish and hobbled as quickly as possible to the front door. As soon as it drew near, its arms fractured, and its mass collided with the exit. Splotches of sable splattered the cabin like an unorthodox butcher shop, muddying the floor, the furniture, the walls, and all its additions.

The child felt sorry for the thing, but why? "Why indeed,"

"Why is it just lying there?" The child poked its nose further out but was quickly reeled back behind the shrubbery.

That is an extension of Ehko, a blob of ill mystery that even I couldn't comprehend. It is a being who typically feels nothing, but at this moment, it grew unnaturally cold. Can you feel the pain in its heart? Its people have been killed and erased from this world—eradicated without mercy. Look. Though it lacks a mouth, you can see its attention is directed at the cabin door."

"Who would do such a thing? For what purpose." The child could feel the hatred in its heart. It wanted to make them pay, to make them right they're wrong.

"It is man's nature to fear what they don't understand. Often they react with violence, enslavement, and rape to understand a fraction of what they don't know. This time especially hurts as I do not exist in that reality. Like my brothers and sisters, I, too, was uprooted, destroyed, and mantled with only the darkness to call home.

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For this reason, Echo had lost all sense of itself and mutated into an absent-minded tool of destruction. It walks the earth unable to grieve properly, so it seeks revenge and aims to.."

The child muttered toward the blob that was once looking toward the door. "Tell me how many we've lost, and I will kill that many that walk this earth."

Madam's eyes flashed as she turned to search for the blob, but it was already too late. It had appeared before them, rotting away the shrubbery that kept them hidden. Madam could hear the crackle of its breath as it leaned further toward them both. Unable to pull her eyes off the creature, she could still hear the child's soft muttering.

"Bloodshed is what we seek for their transgression. Burn. Dismember."

The blob shot its frame toward the whispering cub.

"A snake's word can never be trusted. She is not some tool for you to use. Especially not for a legacy doomed to fail." The child chattered on as if she was locked in a trance.

The blob wretched its head back toward Madam.

"Never you mind that, Serpent Bitch. Hurry with the tasks, so your idiotic games do not burden her." These were the child's last words before Madam snatched her up by the throat and tore them from the blob into a scene of a summer storm on the coastline of an island. The tear-through space had closed, but the terror that suffocated Madam had turned the hour from day to dusk.

"What the fuck were you thinking!" Madam screamed as she stamped around in the sand. "Tsk. That incident back there has cut my time drastically in half. How am I supposed to tell the story now? What a mess!"

The child staggered to its feet as it shook out the thoughts that had flooded in. "I…everything became so loud, and they screamed at me. I couldn't hear my thoughts; everything was getting dark."

Madam huffed as she whipped a tail around the child to comfort her. "Enough. It wasn't your fault. No one could've known the strong reaction you would've had seeing that place. However, the consequences remain. What you will see next will be a series of journeys you will need to take." Madam whipped her tail to expose a carousel of events that showed cubs leaping through each.

"The story is riddled with pain and tragedy, but you must persevere. I have taken it upon myself to go to each site and leave crumbs that should be easy enough for you to find. I've left your trace on the guides that will help you, but that is all they are."

The child was in disbelief. Tasks? Guides? Who knew dreams could be so surreal? Madam growled with disgust as she wrapped her tail around the child's neck. "Perhaps on the surface, it's a dream, but what if it's real? Shall we dissect the real you?" Madam stripped away the fur of the little Fox and exposed a malnourished child too weak to speak, too tired to move.

"In the real world, you are nothing more than an abandoned child with no history to recall and no one to love. You've been tossed in and out of a home more than you'd like to count. The pre-teen is nothing better than a tenebrous animus whose envy and anger have gone unchecked. You wallow in self-pity, sitting in your excrement, waiting for something to come by; well, here it is.

There is a world out there you know little of, but there is no denying that you belong. We need you to reclaim what has been lost, to return home."

The child spat at the thought of having a home to return to.

"If you won't do it for yourself, do it for your kin. The blob, the one in pain. There are many more like him who want to return home to the Cradle of Heaven. Take them home with you—" There was a tightness in Madam's chest that released the child.

"I'm out of time." She wretched up black blood that seeped into the sand. "There's a man… he's like us. He'll find you; go with him. Please. Go with him—

Everything went dark as if a light bulb had busted. I could feel the sting of the cold air and hear the steam rolling from the washes around the corner. The street light on the corner flickered on and off, exposing a trash-filled alleyway and the cats fighting over a fishbone. They quickly scattered when a side door to a lousy thrift shop opened, and a stout man slumped his way outside. He reeked of alcohol and mold, but it was made better by the stench of his cigarette.

"What the hell….What did I say about ya sleeping here? You got an hour to get lost, Ehko; I don't need ya till the morning."

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